Speaker Cables Listening Test - Nordost

More documents

Recommendations

Info

effective. It’s a neat touch that’s indicative of the lateral thinking that pervades all aspects of the design. Audience Au24 (1m pr, £401.60, 5m spkr, £1591.20) Metropolis Music Tel. (44)(0)1892 539245 Web. www.audience-av.com Audience’s Au24 cables offer a dramatically different face to the high-end cable world. Yet they arrive with excellent recommendations and an internet reputation as a Valhalla beater, which certainly suggests they should be taken seriously. The more so given their comparatively modest price (we are talking highend cables here!). The simple, solid copper cores are designed to minimize inductance and eddy current resistance, while the incredibly straightforward, even minimalist construction follows many of the low-mass tenets that have proved so effective over the years. In fact, Audience have done their best to eliminate any superfluous parts or purely cosmetic elements, on the basis that every time you add additional sleeves or dressing, you can hear it. They’re right too! The end result is an almost impossibly thin lead that’s as basic in appearance as you can get. Despite the minimalist plugs, connections are very tight indeed, while the springy nature of the leads makes any excess something of a handful. Chord Signature (1m pr, £500; 5m spkr £1150) Tel. (44)(0)1980 625700 Net. www.chord.co.uk Chord’s Signature cables might be the company’s flagship products but are still only entry level in highend terms. In technological terms they represent the new trend toward designs based on microwave cables, promising exceptional sound quality for their price. They also represent another of our benchmark products and as such it will be interesting to see how they stack up. In constructional terms, this is another minimalist, low-mass design, despite the comparatively bulky conductors. The construction is absolutely first class with extremely neat finishing and considerable care given to matching materials and conductor surfaces. Hence the use of silver plated copper conductors and plugs in combination with silver solder. Connections are positive without being so tight as to damage socketry, but these cables are very springy indeed, making neat dressing a nightmare. The speaker cable is colossal and if the red and black colour-way upsets your sense of aesthetics, it’s also available in an all black finish. QED Q-nect 3/Silver Anniversary (1m pr, £40; 5m spkr, £80) QED Audio Products Tel. (44)(0)1483 747474 Net. www.qed.co.uk Reproduced From Hi-Fi+ Magazine, Issue 34 www.hifiplus.com EQUIPMENT REVIEW At less than a tenth the price of the next nearest competition, you might well wonder what the QED cables are doing in this group. The answer is simple: I want to know whether people can hear the difference between cheap and expensive cables when they don’t know what they’re listening to. As such, the three-times What Hi-Fi Award winner represents the people’s choice. The basic, stranded speaker cable and shielded twin-ax interconnect use silver-plated copper conductors and offer neat, mass-produced style terminations. Practicality is excellent with the interconnects being flexible and the speaker cables offering a cross-section almost as slim as the Au24. It’s hard to criticize the presentation given the price, although the proof will be in the listening. <strong>Listening</strong> Results The response sheets for the panel were collected and collated to create the table laid out below. The running orders have been corrected to make it easier to follow individual cable performance, although the results are still separated into first and second groups and by listener.
EQUIPMENT REVIEW Scores by Listener TEST GROUP 1 TEST GROUP 2 CONTROL STEREOVOX CHORD NF 10 10 10 NF 15 16 15 SILTECH JH 10 10 10 JH 10 11 9 KR 10 10 10 KR 11 9 13 NF 18 18 18 NF 14 16 16 NORDOST JH 13 12 12 JH 15 15 15 KR 16 16 16 KR 14 13 14 NF 12 16 11 NF 10 11 12 QED JH 15 14 15 JH 6 7 6 KR 12 13 13 KR 8 7 10 NF 16 18 10 NF 10 10 10 AV24 JH 12 15 8 JH 10 10 10 KR 18 16 11 KR 10 10 10 NF 15 15 13 NF 15 16 13 CHORD JH 13 14 13 JH 14 14 15 KR 16 14 13 KR 15 15 15 NF 15 15 15 NF 12 12 12 STEREOVOX JH 12 12 12 JH 7 8 8 KR 17 17 15 KR 10 10 10 In the first group, the Siltech was the first cable scored, whilst in the second it was the Au24, accounting for their straight 10 scores. You can handle this raw data in a number of different ways. Initially, I ranked the cables by overall preference, totaling the scores for each listener and then rating them accordingly. Adding together those ratings then produces an overall ranking for each cable, based on the combined preferences of the panel across both systems and all musical selections. However, one thing became clear almost immediately. The Siltech finished dead last in the first session and a very close third in the second! The result in the first round was also by far the most concerted verdict, with the ranking agreeing across all three listeners. What do we conclude from this? Well, the Siltech cables and the Hovland electronics obviously don’t get along. This kind of incompatibility is always a possibility with cables and has occurred with a vengeance in this instance. That’s why we used two different systems. In this case, the response is to rely on the second set of scores, doubling them up to create an adjusted result, adding it to the results table as an additional entry. Rankings by Listener and Overall CABLE RANKING TOTAL NORDOST 1 1 1 2 2 3 10 Adj. SILTECH - - - 1 3 3 14 CHORD 4 2 4 3 2 1 16 STEREOVOX 2 4 1 (4 5 4) 20 Au24 3 5 3 6 3 4 24 SILTECH 6 6 6 1 3 3 27 QED 5 1 5 5 6 6 28 The final consideration is the question of total scores, or points awarded. Whilst the scoring system is preference based rather than numerical in nature, used in conjunction, the two results present a fuller picture. Overall Rankings and Total Points Awarded CABLE TOTAL SCORE BY RANKING NORDOST 272 1 CHORD 258 3 STEREOVOX 219 4 Adj. SILTECH 218 2 Au24 214 5 QED 199 7 SILTECH 198 6 Conclusions Reproduced From Hi-Fi+ Magazine, Issue 34 www.hifiplus.com Well, the first and most obvious result is the clear preference exhibited by all listeners for the <strong>Nordost</strong> Valhalla. Topping the ratings both in terms of rankings and points scored, our benchmark top-end cable accumulated only four faults (in equestrian speak) with a total of ten against a theoretical minimum of six! That’s an impressive performance by any standards and an emphatic justification for our faith in its abilities. Equally apparent (and reassuring) is the audible gap between the expensive cables and the budget QED. Indeed, barring a single aberration (that we’ll get to later) the gap would have been even wider. Ignore the spurious Siltech results in the first round and it finished plum last in five out of six cases. This is hardly surprising given its price and shouldn’t be taken as a criticism of QED or its products. However, it
Page 2 and 3: Blind Listening To Cables… Can we
Page 4 and 5: panel’s request, their informativ
Page 8 and 9: does rather undermine the notion th

Speaker Cables Listening Test - Nordost

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?